Year 1 Science: Characteristics of animals
In Science, we have learnt lots of information about animals over the past 6 weeks. We have learnt all the animal groups: mammals, reptiles, amphibians, birds and fish. Additionally, we have learnt how to group them based on their diets: carnivores, omnivores and herbivores. Today the children had to draw an animal of their choice into their books and had to write 3 characteristics to describe the animal as well as the animal group it belongs too. For example, a giraffe is a mammal, it is yellow, spotty and has four legs. The children then tried to guess each other’s animal based on the clues, which was a lot of fun!
Friday Celebration Worship and Hello Yellow Day
This morning, we enjoyed an extra special celebration worship to mark ‘Hello Yellow’ Day for World Mental Health Day. We began by exploring the range of emotions we all experience and discussed ways to lift our spirits when we're feeling down, with thoughtful suggestions like listening to favourite music, taking deep breaths, watching a funny film, reading a book, singing wholeheartedly, having a cuddle, or counting to ten. To boost our mood even further, we had a joyful singalong to Golden by K-pop and lit candles to pray for those facing mental health challenges. We then celebrated our Value Award winners across the school—well done to Coban, Reggie, Olly and Percy in EYFS and KS1, and to Harry, Olivia, Carter and Jenson in KS2—for their outstanding attitudes to learning and for consistently demonstrating our Barney’s 4Bs. Congratulations also to India Mill for being our overall Value Award winners with an impressive 979 points, as well as to EYFS and Year 2 for 100% attendance in the infants and Year 3 for an excellent 99.3% in the juniors. Mrs Ham shared the fantastic news that we had 100% attendance across the whole school on Tuesday. We also celebrated the achievements of our pupils beyond the classroom—well done to Mason for swimming 5m, Chester for earning ‘Player of the Week’ as a goalkeeper at Darwen FC, Phoebe for her wonderful dancing, Callie for her gymnastics skills, Callie and Alice for completing the Summer Reading Challenge, Grace for excelling in a recent dance competition with acro, song and dance, classical and her own choreography, Harry for achieving his yellow belt in kickboxing, Thea for being named Star of the Week in gymnastics, Scarlett for being a superstar netballer and earning Player of the Match, Willow for achieving her Puffin award in swimming and Star of the Week in gymnastics, and Eleanor for earning her Stage 4 in swimming, her recycling badge at Rainbows and completing the Summer Reading Challenge. A huge congratulations also went to our brilliant Year 4/5 Girls Football Squad for their outstanding performance in the Girls DPSSA Football League, and to the group of eight Year 2 children who represented our school so brilliantly in the Key Stage 1 Multi Skills Festival. To finish our worship, Mrs Ham reminded us of the upcoming Harvest Family Service at St Barnabas Church this Sunday at 11am, and how we hope to see as many of our children there as possible for a joyful Harvest singalong. We are also proud to be supporting Year 5 and the Rotakids in their campaign to collect as many shoeboxes as possible filled with essentials for local refugees and The Bishop's Harvest Appeal 2025—please see Class Dojo for further information.
Year 1 English: Fact hunt
In our English lesson today, we were looking for facts about Emperor Penguins which will help us to write our non-chronological reports over the next two weeks. The children had to find a fact around the room, remember it and come and write it in the correct box in their English books. They all tried really hard and showed our 4B’s whilst moving around the room: be ready, be safe, be kind, be respectful.
Year 1 Hello Yellow Day
We loved celebrating Hello Yellow Day in Year 1. We discussed that Hello Yellow Day is raising awareness for mental health and the children shared times when they might have felt sad, lonely or scared. We read ‘I am Enough’ by Grace Byers to promote positive mental health and enjoyed lots of fun Hello Yellow activities in our areas like colouring, dot to dot and word searches.
Year 1 RE: building a Sukkah
Today we looked at the Jewish festival Sukkot which lasts for 7 days. Jewish people celebrate Sukkot to thank God for helping the Israelites escape from Egypt with Moses. God gave Moses the power to part the Red Sea so that they could escape. During the festival, Jewish people build a Sukah which they live in for 7 days as a way to reflect and thank God for all that He provides, including food. This links with our own Christian festival Harvest as we say thanks for the food God gives to us. We then built our own Sukkah using chairs, ribbon, sticks and leaves. Year 1 even created a paper chain to decorate their Sukkah. It was lovely to see the children all working together and sharing ideas.
Harvest Appeal
This morning we launched our Harvest Appeal for this year by hearing from Bishop Philip about his Pedalathon on 17th October where he will be cycling to visit and pray at a school or church in all 14 deaneries across the Diocese. We will be supporting Bishop Philip's Harvest Appeal for Christians in South Africa by joining in with his pedalathon over the next few weeks, including half term. We are encouraging our school family to cycle on bikes or scooters just like we did for the Big Lent Walk and we would love for you to send your photos in and the distance. Donations can be made on parent pay shortly. Our RotaKids are also supporting Darwen Asylum and Refugee Enterprise (DARE) and Darwen Rotary this Harvest by creating Winter Warmer boxes filled with toiletries, packets or tins of food and warm clothing for DARE families, the elderly, isolated, poor and vulnerable people in our community . They are also collecting winter coats for the homeless and poor through Darwen Rotary club. Please send in any donations and thank you in advance for your generosity. We then sang some of our Harvest songs for our Church Harvest Festival this Sunday 12th October at 11.00am- all welcome and our school Harvest Festival on Thursday 23rd October led by our WOW group and Reception, Years 1 and 2. All welcome.
Year 1 - Fundamentals - Jumping for Distance
In today’s fundamental skills session, Year 1 focused on jumping for distance. We followed various teaching points including crouching with knees bent, swing arms back and forward, explode forward and push off from toes. The children quickly developed their movements using the theory of uncoiling like a spring. We finished with the challenge of can you jump as long as you are high?
Year 1 Golden Time
This afternoon Year 1 had a special golden time. Over the weeks they have been working really hard to fill up their kindness bucket. We had so many children sharing how they have been kind at playtime or during lessons. To celebrate we watched a movie with biscuits and juice. Well done Year 1!
Year 1 English: Question Marks
In our English today, we looked at sentences that need question marks. Year 1 understood that if a sentence is telling you something then it just needs a full stop, but if a sentence is asking something it needs a question mark. We practiced using actions for question marks and then they independently fixed some sentences in their books with the correct punctuation. Well done Year 1!
Fundamentals in Year 1
In our Fundamentals Skills session today, we looked at a range of elements which included both side gallops and rolling a ball. We warmed up to music from the Jungle Book where the children moved around like big bears, scary black jaguars, mischievous monkeys and slithering snakes. Next we practiced our galloping, concentrating on moving in different ways with a lead leg and facing forwards. Following on from these we used the dodgeballs to develop our rolling of a ball. The children aimed to get the balls in the hoop, with many aiming and predicting as they went along. What a great first session we had in Year 1!
Year 1 Art: experimenting with colours and materials
Today we chose if we wanted to create a cold landscape or a warm landscape. We then reminded ourselves about warm and cool colours so that we could create a background for our landscape. We experimented with watercolour to see how we could use colours and blend them together. Then we looked at different materials and discussed how we might be able to use them on our landscape. For example, cotton wool for a polar bear or green crepe paper for plants in the desert.
Year 1 Science: Animal Diets
Today we became scientific poo detectives. We examined the poo of a lion, cow, bear, rabbit and wolf to decide if they are omnivores, carnivores or herbivores. For carnivores, we were looking to see if there was meat in the poo. For herbivores, we were looking to see if there were leaves in the poo. For omnivores, we were looking to see if there were leaves and meat in the poo. Year 1 correctly identified the animal diets.